You Are Not Doing Me A Favor By Hiring Me
I know, there are so many people out there looking for work and are grateful for being hired, but the work they put into being qualified says they earned a position, its not a favor. I was diagnosed a few years ago with lupus and that ended my ability to work in the traditional sense. A laptop entrepreneur was born. Not because I wanted to wonder if I would have enough money to eat and pay my bills next month (because the freelancing pay is not steady) but because I had to make a living somehow and this allowed me to work from home and work my own hours.
I’ve written all my life. I’ve kept journals since I was in the single digits. At one point and time, I wanted to go into journalism. I had an article published by The Chicago Sun-Times when I was a teenager and by the Air Force Times when I was in the military. Writing for others has been peppered throughout my life but of course, I really enjoy it when I can write about what I want to write about. However, I recognize, if you decide to be a freelancer, whatever you agree to be paid to write about is the topic of the day.
Now, having said that, I am not the perfect writer, sometimes grammatical things may slip by me (thank goodness for Grammarly) but I do my best. I am an independent contractor, not an employee. I have recently had the experience of being treated as if I were given something that I didn’t work for. If you hire me to do work for you, I get started right away. I do this for a few different reasons, the first being, I believe in good customer service. If you contract with me, I am not going to procrastinate on delivering because I don’t want you to procrastinate on paying me. I am going to constantly communicate along the way and the very first portion of the project will be sent to you for review so I can be certain that we are on the same page before I get too deep into the tasks I was hired for.
I was recently hired to write several articles a week, the request came on a Sunday afternoon and was initially for one article. I accepted and on Monday my new client had a fresh article in their email with the request that it be reviewed to make sure I was moving in the direction they’d envisioned. I’d quoted a certain amount initially for 1 article with 500 words. I was asked to write 750 words, I agreed but here is where I will admit, I made an error. I was then asked to write several articles not just one and would I give a volume discount. Normally, I would say to anyone in business, NEVER discount but I will be honest, I got a little excited because my research of this company showed me that I could probably make a full-time income if I showed that I was a good writer. They have many holdings and I was looking toward the future. Did I mention that I pay out of my pocket my medical expenses for my ongoing care with lupus? I agreed to take a lesser amount for 500 words but was again asked to write 750 but at the 500-word rate to start. Mistake number 2 was not finding out exactly what “to start” meant. I assumed it meant for the 1st few since the wording was basically, once we review your initial few articles, we will give you access to the back office. So I agreed.

After submitting the first article, I was pleased when the back office was opened pretty much the next day. I thought, yay! That article must have been bangin’. So by Wednesday, they had all of the articles for the week in their back office. Now, let me say that every time I’ve been given access to the back office of a client, I’ve never had a problem with them. So I had no reason to think this would be any different. After all, they have made themselves vulnerable by allowing me into their inner workings. I was told I would be paid via Paypal which is how many of my clients pay, I sent over my PayPal email address and was excited to get the articles started for the following week. Now, one thing I have learned is never to write directly to their platform. This is for many reasons but I won’t go into that. Then I was told, we will review your work either on Friday or Tuesday. Wait, what? So I got your articles written in a timely fashion, allowed you to review prior to moving any further and now you need to review again before paying me? Friday came and went and so did Tuesday. Then I got a request to write the articles on their platform. Ummm, no, sir.
I explained that there were already articles that needed to be paid for and that I would not add anything more until that bill was handled since the agreement was weekly payments. Then I was told to send a PayPal payment request, now I’m starting to think, chalk this one up, you’re never going to see that money. I sent the request and on Wednesday I got an email that said my request had been received and that my contact person was really busy working on a big project. In my mind, this was laughable. I don’t care what you’re working on, that’s not my problem. I’m working on a really big project too, YOURS! If you are not ready to adhere to your agreements, then get out of business. Next came a request for a phone call and the hours that they were available. Again, laughable, so I responded with my hours of availability and my phone number and a correction of the spelling of my name in all caps (I hate when people add a Y to my name, the correct spelling is in my email address).

Now, keep in mind that this was not just a few dollars, I wanted to collect so the night before, I prepared myself to try to be nice and not tell my contact to kiss my bald-headed black ass the next day. When the phone call came, I was professional and was told of all the holdings this company had (I’d already researched them). Coming from a sales background, I recognize this as what is supposed to be a subtle way of saying, we can make you a lot of money. Well, that’s cute but you haven’t paid me yet so I’m not impressed and not only am I not impressed, you are negotiating me down as if you are brand new! So after the dog and ponies were pranced out, I was told that they want to potentially bring me on to the full company, not just the segment I wrote the initial articles for. Now comes the kick in the head, I was told that the CEO reviewed my articles and wasn’t impressed. What CEO has time to read blog articles? My response was “then that means you didn’t set the proper expectation, this is why you were sent the initial article to review.” So let me make sure I’ve got this right, you liked my article so much that you hired me on early, then you cut my rate, paid me late and now you’re wanting to “bring me on” to all of your holdings for unimpressive writing? Where they do that at?

Then I was told, I would be “given a chance to add more articles for him to review”. So, this is where I had to let him know, I don’t work FOR you. I am a contractor, not your employee, I am what they call “self-employed”. A week of pay in the hole is not what this life is about and not paying in a timely fashion…I’m not here for that. I explained that I am running a business and that I delivered based on the expectations that were set and that they were out of order. I told him, I would love to continue to work with you but I need to increase my rate and I expect to be paid EVERY SINGLE FRIDAY. Now, let me go on record as saying, I still hadn’t been paid at that point. I was told I’d be paid within 30 minutes of the call. An hour later I sent the invoice. Two hours later I sent a follow-up email asking if they got the invoice because I still didn’t have the pay I’d been promised well over an hour ago.
Just as the email chimed to say you’ve been paid, my phone rang asking me to revise the articles they’d just paid for. The professional in me opened the platform and the angry person in me shut that shit down and decided, they could wait. Clearly, they aren’t in a big hurry to pay so I am not in a big hurry to continue to deliver when I have clients who are better behaved. So in a nutshell, this rant is to say, if you hire a contractor, set clear expectations. If they are not being met, communicate that before they get too far into the tasks that you have assigned to them. When they do the work that you asked for and approved, do not think that diminishing them will make them feel so inadequate that you can get a lower rate. I know I caught him off guard when I told him that HE clearly didn’t set the right expectation, I was supposed to feel like I was not a good writer and allow him to keep the lower rate, he was also sure to tell me of another “wonderful” writer who gets less than what I was asking. My response, well that’s good for her but here is what I want if we are going to move forward.

I am an independent contractor, I work for my money. By contracting with me, you didn’t do me a favor, you didn’t GIVE me anything that I didn’t work for. You need something and I need something, it’s a mutual need. You need articles, I need to be paid on time. Period. Point blank, end of discussion.
